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With regime change in Tunisia and Egypt, and Libya’s uprising continuing apace, a growing number of commentators are hailing the influence of Facebook and Twitter in helping world-be-revolutionaries coordinate their actions.

Earlier this week, SGN founder and angel investor, Shervin Pishevar tweeted that “Twitter and Facebook are shields against future genocides. Like new antibodies in the body of humanity” – which is pretty damn profound. So profound, in fact, that I brought him into the TechCrunch TV studio to explain himself.

As an on-the-record skeptic of the role of social media in causing revolutions, I wanted to know how the “social media revolution” differs from previous communications revolutions. We also discussed how the Rwandan genocide might have been covered differently today, how the Internet can avoid being shut down by dictators and Pishevar’s involvement with Openmesh – a project that aims to use technology to keep communications channels open.